Frequent Urination: Causes, What It Means & How To Stop

Frequent urination is a symptom of hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar. Diabetes can cause frequent urination, but urinating frequently can also have other causes, such as a urinary tract infection.

If you’re urinating more often than usual, your frequent urination could be a symptom of high blood sugar, which may be an early symptom of diabetes.

However, there are many potential causes of frequent urination, including some that are harmless.

It’s important to understand the relationship between diabetes and bladder function, as well as other symptoms that indicate it’s time to consult a doctor about your frequent urination.

Why does diabetes cause frequent urination?
Diabetes is a condition that, among other symptoms, causes your body to have trouble creating or using insulin.

In people with type 1 diabetes, the body no longer produces insulin or does not produce enough insulin. In type 2 diabetes, the body has lower insulin sensitivity and uses insulin less effectively.

Insulin is a hormone that draws glucose, or sugar, into the cells to use as energy. This can result in high blood sugar levels.

Too much sugar in your blood is extremely taxing on the kidneys, which work to reabsorb sugar into the bloodstream. When the kidneys can’t reabsorb all the sugar correctly, urination helps eliminate much of that glucose from the body.

How to know if it’s diabetes
Frequent urination is a hallmark symptom of hyperglycemia associated with both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. This is because the elimination of bodily fluids is sometimes your body’s only way of flushing excess blood sugar.

But urinating more than usual is just one of many symptomsTrusted Source of diabetes. Other health conditions can cause this symptom, too. If you’re worried about diabetes, it’s important to look out for some of these other common diabetes symptoms:

• Fatigue: If cells cannot draw on glucose for energy, this can leave people with diabetes feeling depleted and exhausted much of the time. Dehydration only makes the fatigue worse.
• Weight loss: A combination of low insulin levels and a difficulty absorbing sugar from the blood can lead to rapid weight loss in people with diabetes.
• Blurred vision: This side effect due to diabetes may be from swelling of the lens of the eyes when blood sugar levels fluctuate. Over time, blurred vision occurs due to damage to the retina’s blood vessels.
• Swollen gums: Those with diabetes can be at a higher risk of infections, buildup of pus, or swelling in the gums.
• Tingling: A loss of sensation in the limbs, fingers, or toes is a common side effect of excess blood sugar and may be a symptom of diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

How to treat frequent urination caused by diabetes

Treating the diabetes as a whole is the best way to approach treating bladder problems stemming from diabetes.

Simply monitoring fluid intake or scheduling bathroom trips likely won’t help much, as the major problem is excess blood sugar, not excess fluid.

If you do have diabetes, make sure to contact a doctor who can come up with a treatment plan specifically for you. In general, common treatments for diabetes include:

Diet and blood sugar monitoring

People with diabetes need to be keenly aware of what they eat while keeping a close eye on blood sugar levels, ensuring they don’t get too high or too low. Eat a balanced diet filled with fibrous fruits and vegetables and low in processed sugar and carbohydrates.